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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Aristotle

By Russell M. Lawson

World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras

Aristotle is considered the greatest scientist and one of
the greatest philosophers of the ancient world. A student of Plato, Aristotle
was the teacher of Alexander the Great and the founder of the Peripatetic
school of thought. His vast writings include Metaphysics, Physics, Nichomachean
Ethics, Politics, and Poetics. Aristotle was one of the first empirical
thinkers, though he generally relied on established methods of science:
observation, collection and categorization of specimens, analysis of data, induction,
and deduction. Aristotle's mastery of the subjects he studied gained him the
reputation in subsequent centuries as an infallible guide to natural phenomena
and philosophy. After 1500 CE, in light of new discoveries by Nicholas
Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and other scientists, many of Aristotle's
theories were rejected; nevertheless, his influence on modern science is
undeniable.

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in the small town of Stagira
in Thrace, a primitive outpost of Greek culture east of Macedonia. His father
was a wealthy court physician to the kings of Macedonia, and Aristotle spent
his early years at Pella, the capital of King Amyntas III and his successor
King Philip II of Macedon. Aristotle, seeking to follow in his father's footsteps
as a scientist and physician, journeyed south to Athens in 366. He studied at
the Academy, Plato's school in Athens, where he became that philosopher's most
famous student. At the Academy, Aristotle fit in as a wealthy aristocrat, but
his Thracian and Macedonian background plagued him among condescending
Athenians. In the end, Aristotle's superior intellect silenced all criticism.

From Plato, Aristotle learned of the universal truth, which
Socrates termed "the Good." Plato taught his students at the Academy
that the best means to approach an understanding of truth was through reason,
the study of mathematics and music, intuition, and intense and deep
contemplation. Aristotle, less the mystical and more the pragmatic thinker,
broke from his teacher by adopting the scientific approach to human behavior,
natural philosophy, natural science, ethics, and metaphysics. Aristotle also
learned from Plato of being (ousia), the divine essence, from which all things
derive. Aristotle did not abandon this religious interpretation of the ultimate
reality but brought science to bear to discover and to understand it. For
Aristotle, then, science is a pious act to discover the nature of goodness,
justice, virtue, and being, and human experience is an essential matter for study,
since the better sort of human beings echo being itself.

Upon Plato's death, Aristotle left what was no doubt a
competitive situation among Plato's students, each jockeying to take the place
of the master. Aristotle journeyed to a small kingdom in Asia Minor
(present-day Turkey) where he became court philosopher to King Hermias.
Aristotle married the king's daughter but soon fled (with his wife) upon the
tragic assassination of the king. Aristotle ended up back in Macedonia in 343,
this time as tutor to the royal prince Alexander (Alexander the Great). Legend
has it that Philip II of Macedon enticed Aristotle to return to Pella, an
intellectual and cultural backwater compared to Athens, with a tempting salary
and a promise: Stagira having been destroyed and its population enslaved in one
of Philip's campaigns, Philip proposed that in return for Aristotle's services
the king would rebuild the town and bring the inhabitants out of slavery.
Aristotle agreed to the terms.

Alexander eventually became king of Macedonia in 336 upon
his father's assassination and then spent the next 13 years of his life
conquering Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and
Afghanistan—all of which made up the Persian Empire. Alexander was a warrior
and conqueror who thought himself the heroic son of the king of the gods, Zeus.
Nevertheless, Aristotle, who eschewed the life of a warrior, had been
Alexander's teacher for three years during the years from 13 to 16, and below
the surface of Alexander's actions are hints that he had adopted the life of a
philosopher and that he thought of himself as a scientist, even a physician.
Alexander, for example, composed letters to Aristotle that included samples of
plant and animal life that he had gathered for his teacher's collection.

In the meantime, Aristotle had left Macedonia for Athens,
where he opened his school, the Lyceum. The philosopher eventually broke with
Alexander over the death of Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes, a philosopher
and historian who accompanied Alexander's expedition. Callisthenes was
implicated in a plot to assassinate the king and was executed. Even so, the
Athenians associated Aristotle with Alexander, who was very unpopular in
Athens. Upon Alexander's death in 323, the Athenians felt free enough to throw
off the shackles imposed on them by Alexander—and one shackle was represented
by Alexander's former teacher. Aristotle was eventually forced to flee the city
and abandon his school. He died soon after, in 322 BCE.

Aristotle is perhaps best known today as a logician. He
created a system of thought based on fundamental assumptions that one cannot
doubt—the famous a priori truths. Whereas Plato believed that one must
accomplish knowledge of truth by means of reason and intuition, Aristotle
believed that the philosopher must observe particular phenomena to arrive at an
understanding of reality, a scientific technique known as induction. Once truth
is known through induction from the particular to the universal, the
philosopher can engage in the process of deduction from the basis of the
universal to arrive at other particular truths. Aristotle's system of logic is
known as syllogism.

Aristotle also made contributions in metaphysics, the study
of reality that transcends the physical world. Once again a priori truths are
the basis for metaphysical studies. Aristotle assumed that there is a First
Cause, an "unmoved mover," that he defined as actuality, in contrast
to potency, or the potential, which represents movement. Aristotle argued that
all reality can be explained according to cause and effect, act and potential.
For example, time is an actual phenomenon—it has existence as a form or
essence. Time acts upon human movement, providing a temporal context in which
humans are born, live, and die, all the while measuring their lives according
to the standard of time. Aristotle further argued in Metaphysics that one must
distinguish between art and experience. Art as essence is based on abstract
thought—what the Greeks termed the logos—whereas experience is based on a
series of particular events occurring in time. In Poetics, Aristotle argued
that poetry (art) explores universals and how things ought to be, while history
(historia) explains the particulars of human existence and how things are.
Wisdom represents the unification of art and experience.

Aristotle's treatise on natural science was Physics. Natural
science, he wrote, is concerned with physical movement from the first
principles of nature. Aristotle associated nature with the first cause. His
unmoved mover was an amorphous divine force of creation which establishes the
laws through which movement—plant, animal, and human—occurs. The four causal
determinants expressed in nature are: 1) the material substance that forms a
physical object; 2) the type or class of phenomenon (genos) to which an object
belongs; 3) the cause of change in or movement of an object; and 4) the goal or
purpose (telos) of movement.

Aristotle's categorizations had a profound impact on the
formation of a vocabulary of science. His notion of type or class is the basis
for the notion that a species in nature comprises a set genus. Aristotle's idea
of goal or purpose forms the philosophical concept of teleology, the study of
the end of natural phenomena.

In addition, Aristotle was one of the first students of the
human psyche. He wrote treatises on dreams, memory, the senses, prophecy,
sleep, and the soul. Aristotle believed that the soul is the actuality within
the potency of the body and is the unmoved mover within each individual human,
while the mind (nous) is an expression of the soul. Aristotle argued that each
human soul is part of a universal whole which is a world soul, the ultimate
actuality, and the first cause. Aristotle's study of dreams provided a rational
explanation of what the ancients often considered a supernatural phenomenon.
Aristotle argued that the only thing "divine" about a dream is that
it is part of nature, which is itself the creation of God and hence divine.
That events turn out according to one's dream is either coincidence or the
result of the subtle impact of a dream on an individual's actions.

In zoological studies, Aristotle's contributions included
the treatises Description of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of
Animals. In Parts of Animals, Aristotle noted that although animals are a less
profound area of study than the metaphysical, nevertheless it is an inquiry
accessible to anyone willing to explore natural history. Consistent with his
Platonic background, Aristotle studied animals for the sake of understanding
the whole of natural history. He assumed that the source of all good and beauty
is the same source of animal and biological phenomena and that hence even
animals mirror the divine.

In the study of ethics, Aristotle dealt with the question of
how the ultimate basis of behavior, the set of rules that establishes the Good,
can be understood according to science. Aristotle believed that the tools of
science—observation, categorization, logic,and
induction—could be brought to bear on the study of human behavior. The
scientist studies human behavior in its incredible variety of contexts to
arrive at general laws of how humans act and how they should act: how humans
act is the realm of the scientist, while how humans should act is the realm of
the philosopher. Once again, Aristotle combined science and philosophy into one
organized study. Aristotle believed that the ultimate end of human existence is
happiness, which occurs when humans conform to the Good. The Good is
accomplished when humans exercise reason in accordance with virtue. Aristotle
studied human behavior to arrive at a definition of virtue, finding that it is
an action performed for its own sake, that is, an action performed for the sake
of the Good or an action performed out of principle. Aristotle believed that
vice, the opposite of virtue, derives from actions committed for selfish
reasons or for personal motives.

The Greek philosophers before and during Aristotle's time
were the first political scientists. Aristotle's contribution, Politics,
applied his philosophical methods and assumptions to the understanding of
statecraft. He argued that the state is, as it were, the actual, while the
citizens are the potential. The latter are the parts (the particulars) that
made up the whole, or the universal body politic. Aristotle conceived of a
pluralistic society operating according to natural laws based in part on reason
and necessity, a social compact among people to promote security and serve the
needs of survival. Within this concept of the state (which represents virtue)
people move, act, and struggle for power and wealth. Aristotle argued, based on
his experience at Athens, that slavery was justified because of the inferior
intellect of slaves. Likewise, he assumed that women lacked the cognitive
abilities of males and therefore should not participate in democracy. In The
Athenian Constitution, Aristotle provided a detailed analysis of Athenian
democracy, providing details into the life and political science of the great
Athenian lawgiver Solon.

In the study of astronomy, Aristotle explored his ideas in
On the Heavens. Based on observation, Aristotle established the spherical
nature of the earth. Viewing a lunar eclipse, Aristotle detected a slight
curvature of the shadow of the earth on the moon's surface. He also observed
that the altitude of stars changes according to changes in latitude. In On the
Heavens, Aristotle concluded that the earth's circumference is 400,000 stadia
(40,000–50,000 miles, which was an overestimate of 45%). He advocated the view
that there is more water than land on the earth's surface. Much of Aristotle's
thought on astronomy, however, was erroneous, as observation with the naked eye
was insufficient for the study of the nature of the stars and planets.

Aristotle's ideas were advocated and defended for centuries
after the philosopher's death. Aristotle's disciples were known by the master's
teaching style of walking about while engaged in discussion or disputation
(from which the name "Peripatetic" derives). Theophrastus took over
the helm of the Lyceum, Aristotle's school at Athens. He organized Aristotle's
papers and writings and pursued Aristotle's theories and investigations in the
physical and metaphysical worlds. After Theophrastus's death in 287 BCE, Strato
assumed leadership of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic philosophers.

This work demonstrates how falsafah (which linguistically refers to a group of commentaries by Muslim scholars associated with their readings of "The Corpus Aristotelicum") in Iran has been always closely linked with religion. It demonstrates that the blending of the new natural theology with Iranian culture created an intellectual climate that made Iran the center of falsafah in the Medieval world. The author begins this book by exploring the analytical arguments and methodologies presented as the subject of the first-philosophy (metaphysics) in the works of Aristotle (in particular "The Nicomachean Ethics" and "Rhetoric"). Then, he tells the tale of the Muslims' progression as they came to own and expand upon Aristotle's arguments and methodologies as a measure of their own sense of spirituality. Last, Sadri surveys the implications of that sense of spirituality as it is amalgamated within the Iranian culture and today's Islamic Republic of Iran. The author's aim is to present a different perspective of falsafah (as it is received by Muslims and assimilated within Iranian culture), while maintaining a sense that captures the texture of everyday life-experiences in today's Islamic Republic of Iran. This work is thus about (contemporary) Iranian falsafah and how it remains faithful to its tradition (as falsafah has actually been integrated and practiced by Iranian scholars for the last eleven centuries). It is a tradition that has taken on the task of understanding and projecting a sense of order upon the multiplicity of forms, ideas, examples, and images that have passed through Iran from East and West; it is a story that has gathered, sheltered, and introduced a style and order of Iranain Islamic (Shi'at) falsafah.

Reviews

"While Sadri's monograph is written in an engaging, quasi-autobiographical style, still it is rich in philosophical exposition and insight coupled with a clearly developed explication of Islamic religious/philosophical thought in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In turn this is used to explain Iranian culture as it can be understood in contemporary analysis." - Prof. Carl R. Hasler, Collin College

"The interdisciplinary approach allows [the author] to introduce a chronicle of his people that encompasses the dynamic growth of the intellectual and religious thought in the Middle East. A thoughtful study for scholars of comparative religion, Sadri juxtaposes Medieval Islam with Medieval Christianity, showing the philosophical foundations that distinguish these two contemporary religions." - Prof. Linda Deaver, Kaplan University

"Taking as his point of departure the fate of Aristotle's corpus in medieval Christianity and in medieval Islam, Sadri offers a masterful account of how the current status of Western and Iranian identity can be read through the palimpsest of a philosophical/religious recovery of Aristotle's practical philosophy." - Prof. Charles Bambach, University of Texas, Dallas

Table of Contents

ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Commentaries on Aristotle2. Commentaries on Aristotle and Islam3. Commentaries on Islam4. Commentaries on Islam and Iran5. Commentaries on IranEndnotesBibliographyIndex

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To respond “at the right times with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way, is what is appropriate and best, and this is characteristic of excellence.”Aristotle (EN, 1106b21-3)